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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29152635">comfortable place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ly1ds/pseuds/ly1ds'>ly1ds</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, F/M, hange is a pathologist, kidnapping in chapter 2, levi loses his shit, she really loves corpses just like she loved titans</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:29:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29152635</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ly1ds/pseuds/ly1ds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi finds his comfort in warmth, calmness and solitude, where he can let go of his thoughts, relax his shoulders and take a deep breath.</p><p>Hanji finds her comfort in the cold, movement and people, even the dead ones.</p><p>It's amazing how easily they find comfort in each other.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Levi/Hange Zoë</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Levi opens the door with his feet. The crash from its collision is heard throughout the room. The person lying in front of Levi would immediately jump up in fright or fall right off the table, hitting his head. He would have done if he hadn't been dead, of course. The morgue is always too cold.</p><p>"Please tell me that you just haven't sniffed a corpse."<br/>"This is necessary for research!"</p><p>Hanji wears a woolen sweater, a white coat, a protective mask and drinks eight mugs of coffee a day. Only Levi with his ten cups is ahead of her. Hanji Zoe is a local pathologist.</p><p>"Spit it out, already." Hanji smiles broadly.<br/>"Each victim was injected with a unique cocktail of drugs to gradually disable their bodies. It's a terrible agony!" Hanji literally glows as she tells this. Levi looks at her emotionlessly, indifferently, but inside he doesn't cease to be amazed at her enthusiasm.</p><p>"Spit it out, already." She mimics him.<br/>"I sketched his profile." Ackerman comes closer to the body, carefully examines it from all sides. "The suspect is probably a white male. He doesn't stand out - his height and build are average, he is smart, but not smarter than me. He is a highly functional psychopath." Zoe chuckles slightly, but keeps the joke to herself. Levi is already too often called behind his back an abnormal or a psychopath, she doesn't want to be the one, who is gonna tell him this in the face.</p><p>Hanji monitors his movements - not only his body, but also his face. It remains calm in any situation.</p><p>"You sewed up the bodies well." Levi lifts the sheet, examining the neat seam. "You're just a picasso with formaldehyde."</p><p>Zoe breaks into a wide smile, looking at him with almost stars in her eyes. "Thanks! and you..." She examines him from head to toe. He raises an eyebrow. "You are so skinny!"</p><p>"Thanks, I'm sick of the food." Zoe sighs heavily and goes to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee. She chooses a mug with a heart. As if by accident.</p><p>"How much did you sleep?"<br/>"Six hours."</p><p>She frowns in displeasure. He involuntarily fades under her gaze.</p><p>"Three days ago."</p><p>Zoe rolls her eyes, but hands him a mug of coffee. No milk, no sugar. They have identical tastes.</p><p>(the only difference is that Hanji sometimes dilutes the coffee with whiskey).<br/>(She doesn't know that Levi adds to his drink brandy).</p><p>Ackerman nods slightly, turning back to the corpse. He's tense. He doesn't sleep, he immerses himself in work, doesn't listen to Erwin's orders - he continues to take on every new case, not allowing the recruits to work unattended. Otherwise there will be a shot again. Otherwise, there will be minus one in their team again. Levi won't let that happen.</p><p>"You know that I sometimes sleep in the storage chambers for bodies?" Levi almost spits out his coffee, looking dumbfounded at the girl. She doesn't smile, doesn't laugh, doesn't joke. She speaks seriously, openly, as if dedicating him to something private and secret.</p><p>She trusts him.</p><p>"I'm comfortable here." She looks around her office — she sees medical supplies, dead bodies under the sheets, cold tables. This is her home.</p><p>"Maybe you should try to find a place where you can sleep comfortably?"</p><p>Levi leaves without a word. He needs to catch criminals.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He carries a pillow and a blanket all over the apartment. He can't sleep on the bed, sogoes to the living room. It doesn't work there, so tries to fall asleep in the bathroom. Then lies on the floor, on the balcony, and then right next to the refrigerator - almost in the coldest place of the apartment.</p><p>Suddenly he realizes.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Hanji is awakened by a loud but short knock on the door. Zoe works in the police for the seventh year, she quickly takes a gun from the bedside table, and cautiously walks to the door.</p><p>"If you open this door and point a gun at me, you will have no hands left to hold it."</p><p>"What the hell are you doing here?"</p><p>The door opens abruptly, and Levi grins a little, seeing the gun in her left hand.</p><p>"You yourself suggested." Zoe looks at him as if he was retarded. And then she remembers.</p><p>"So you found a comfortable place?" She smiles.</p><p>Levi Ackerman catches murderers, maniacs and psychopaths every day, making their psychological portraits. Hanji Zoe arrives at the scene of the murder every time with a huge smile and love for the human body. Especially the dead ones. Especially with the guts turned inside out.</p><p>Levi finds his comfort in warmth, calmness and solitude, where he can let go of his thoughts, relax his shoulders and take a deep breath.</p><p>hanji finds his comfort in the cold, movement and people, even the dead ones.</p><p>It's amazing how easily they find comfort in each other.</p><p>Climbing under the common blanket, Levi feels the touch of her body to his own. Hanji lies facing him, examines every feature, every emerging wrinkle and every curve.</p><p>"Stop staring at me."<br/>"You yourself climbed into my bed, don't complain." He grins.</p><p>Closing his eyes, he feels how her hand is intertwined with his, and her body moves closer. Levi has almost difficulty breathing when Hanji rests his head on his chest, listening to his heart. Beating. Still alive. Warm. Not like her morgue friends.</p><p>Hanji lives in the cold of the morgue and the unnatural lighting of the lamps. Levi lives in the cold autumn streets and sunlight. But in this darkness, for the first time, they warm up, snuggling closer to each other, intertwining with each other, as if trying to become one.</p><p>For the first time in a long time, Levi falls asleep with a smile on his face.</p><p>He finally found his comfortable place.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Levi throws one of the chairs straight into the wall, cursing loudly. The very corpses that Zoe admired last week are the very bodies that the imitator killed. What did Hanji say then? "They were dying in terrible agony."</p><p>He got to her too.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Levi, sit down, please."<br/>
"Sit down? Really? Hanji is gone, and you're talking so fucking calm about it!"</p><p>Levi nervously walks around Captain Smith's office, ready to destroy absolutely everything here if the officers Ackerman and Jaeger return without information. He has to save Hanji.</p><p>To their great surprise, Detective Arlert flies into the office first with a brown folder in his hands.</p><p>"Remember the case of the surgeon from the 90s?" Erwin swallows hard, remembering how he worked on this case as a simple officer who just came to the police.</p><p>"He got a copycat."</p><p>Levi throws one of the chairs straight into the wall, cursing loudly. The very corpses that Zoe admired last week are the very bodies that the imitator killed. What did Hanji say then? "They were dying in terrible agony."</p><p>He got to her too.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ackerman kicks the cell door open, causing it to hit the cage with a huge crash. The man sitting inside is smiling pretty. Erwin standing nearby tenses slightly and clenches his fists.</p><p>"I haven't seen you for a while, Lieutenant Smith."<br/>
"It's Captain Smith now, actually." Zeke laughs out loud.</p><p>"I have an imitator? Really? Wow, I'm so flattered." Zeke doesn't even try to sound sympathetic or remorseful, he perfectly understands why the police are here and what they need from him. "And, of course, deeply concerned."</p><p>Levi wants to kick him in the face, pressing him roughly into the floor.</p><p>They have to make a deal with him because there is simply no other choice.Llife imprisonment can easily be replaced by seventy-five years with parole option. Erwin thinks he won't live that long. Zeke is confident that one day he can come out. In any way.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>"We're looking for Reiner Braun." A folder with a dossier on this guy falls on the table. Armin takes it to himself, starting to leaf through it carefully, while Mikasa and Eren listen attentively to Levi. "He knows the surgeon's cocktail recipe. He is our imitator."</p><p>Levi doesn't sleep for several nights, trying to calculate the pattern of finding the bodies and their similarity. Why these women? What unites them?</p><p>Arlert, knocking gently on his office, says they have found a new body. Ackerman swallows hard at the description. It's too similar.</p><p> </p><p>Ackermans don't cry - this rule has been proven by both Levi and Mikasa for several years. Little remained of the corpse, for the first time it was more crippled than the others. But Levi recognizes hair, glasses and clothes, even if the face is crushed into flesh.</p><p>Ackermans don't cry. But this night the levi screams heart-rendingly.</p><p> </p><p>"He was spotted on cameras near an abandoned parking lot!"</p><p>Eren never knocks, only bursts in, opening the door with a huge thud. Levi and Erwin jump up at the same time, contact the troops, quickly grab their jackets and run out to the car. They promise not to let others die.</p><p> </p><p>"Stand still, it's the police!" Levi is pointing the gun at the man from the photo they've all been staring at for weeks. The police is rummaging through the parking lot in the other direction, here the Ackerman ran alone. Reiner slowly raises his arms and turns around.</p><p>Levi doesn't have time to say the banal "hands behind your head" when Braun rushes at him, knocking the gun out of his hands and forcing him to fall to the ground. Levi's neck is wrapped around unpleasantly by a tightly tightened belt that doesn't allow him to breathe.</p><p>To some extent, he hopes that this may all end.</p><p>And then a loud shot is heard over his ear.</p><p>Clearing his throat loudly and trying to bring his breathing back to normal, the Levi sees someone else's bare feet in front of him.</p><p>"I always knew that sooner or later you will fall at my feet." She laughs not so loudly and far from sincere. But she laughs.</p><p>She breathes.</p><p>Levi drops a tear for the first time.</p><p>When he looks up at her, he is speechless. There is no trace of her clothes - she is dressed in some kind of hospital gown, her wrists are bandaged, the legs are bruised, and most importantly, one eye is bandaged.</p><p>But Zoe smiles slightly as she sits down next to him. She's still holding his gun.</p><p>"You don't have to say anything, I know that now I can't compete for the title of Miss Beauty Police Station. But you know, maybe now I will have a little more in common with corpses..."<br/>
"What the fuck are you talking about, Hanji?"</p><p>She looks at him in surprise.</p><p>"The only think that matters is that you are fucking alive." Not controlling himself, he throws himself on her, almost forcing her to fall on the dirty ground. She hisses with pain and Levi almost wants to push off and let go, but she doesn't give him the possibility - she only presses herself even closer, clinging tightly to the police jacket and deeply inhaling the smell of home.</p><p>"I was afraid you were dead."<br/>
"I was afraid that I would die without saying goodbye."</p><p>Ackerman wants to hit her for such thoughts - why bother thinking about her death and the last words? She always needs to keep fighting without ever doubting yourself. Without doubting Levi.</p><p>"Never think about saying goodbye."<br/>
"But I wanted to tell you that I love you."</p><p>Levi can't control his breathing - for a second, a single second, he stops breathing. He already makes too many exceptions for Hanji, would one more be superfluous?</p><p>"I know, you dummy". He gently opens his arms, kissing her forehead. Somewhere behind them he can already hear the voices of Eren and Erwin - soon they will run up here and Levi will have to account for the shot to kill. He will take the blame. He will save Hanji as promised.</p><p>"You need to get a tattoo."<br/>
"What? What for?!"<br/>
"So that next time I won't doubt."</p><p>Zoe doesn't understand at all what he is talking about, but easily agrees to this proposal. If Levi said so, then it must be so. She trusts him completely.</p><p>Yet he really saved her.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After only two weeks, Hanji with huge shouts and curses will force the doctors to discharge her from the hospital in order to return to work. She misses her morgue, misses the team, misses her home and her soft bed.</p><p>She misses Levi next to her.</p><p>After only two weeks, in the stillness of the night, Ackerman will carefully watch her chest rise as she breathes measuredly in her sleep. He will take her hand, noticing that she will smile in her sleep.</p><p>With great love and tenderness, Ackerman will kiss the small tattoo on her wrist.</p><p>"Take care of yourself".</p><p>On his left hand the same inscription will flaunt. And this is the only promise that they both intend to keep. No matter what.</p>
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